10 ms·

Entrepreneurs: Struggling to Recruit Software Engineers

16 points by pavel 16y ago

randfish 16y ago
This is the biggest problem we've encountered scaling our startup. We're profitable, growing, have a great customer base and solid marketing, but our product simply can't keep up with customer demands and opportunities to solve problems because we're unable to recruit engineers (despite paying 25%+ above market rates and offering generous benefits, a great team and interesting problems). When you have money in the bank, customers who want a product and 9 engineers when you need 15, it's a tough problem. Compromising on quality of engineers or cultural fit has been very bad for us in the past, so we're definitely picky now, but even still, the dearth of qualified individuals is a serious impediment to growth.
- jbail 16y ago
  Do you allow telecommuting? Or are you looking for local candidates only? What is your strategy to reach potential candidates? Are you working with a headhunter?
- patio11 16y ago
  I don't know how much domain expertise you would prefer your engineers to have about SEO, Rand, but have you considered that someone with the fairly rare combination of chops sufficient to build your tools and SEO expertise now has fantastically attractive options? You may be misidentifying the market you need to buy them from, and hence the market clearing price. The capitalist in me thinks it is virtually axiomatic that if you cannot fill demand at a 25% premium to the market clearing price you are in fact mistaken as to what you believe that price to be. Incindentally, a client of mine coming from the other side (they practically wrote the book on attracting engineering talent, but internal SEO knowledge is limited) has the same problem finding that combo.
  - kls 16y ago
    Right, if you are using a salary site, it has been my observation that they are not correct whether it is a vast corporate conspiracy or just an anomaly ever time I check them they seem to under represent the reality of the market from 15-20%. Which is weird because you would think that the reporting person would inflate their earning to try to inflate the market. Maybe they are telling the truth and the sites have logic to try to account for an inflation that is not being falsely represented. Anyway, point is check you data source and ensure that it is reliable you may not be as far above the market as you assume you are.
- conorgil145 16y ago
  Just to let you know, I visited your website hoping to find out more about the open positions that you have at your company and could not find a page listing them. I visited the page titled 'SEO jobs' expecting it to be your open positions, but it looks like this is more of a job board. I don't know anything about your site so maybe I am missing something, but you might want to make it easier for developers to see which positions you have available. I hope you find some good developers!
- anamax 16y ago
  > we're unable to recruit engineers (despite paying 25%+ above market rates and offering generous benefits, a great team and interesting problems). If that is actually true, there's something negative that you're not mentioning. FWIW, I suspect that it isn't actually true. That said, there could be some other factor at work as well.
jbail 16y ago
I work as a software engineer. A few months ago, I was looking to for a job switch and got TONS of calls from companies both big and small in CA and NYC (mostly CA though). No offense to either place, but for me, neither is somewhere I'd want to live. Visit? Sure. Live, no thanks. Just me personally, but I settled on Denver for the work/life/outdoors balance without crazy amounts of traffic/crime/people. Fits me best. Maybe not you, and that's cool. We're all different. All of those offers from CA and NYC were conditional upon me moving. I wonder if that's what's hurting the hiring in some of the bigger markets. Maybe telecommuting is the answer for these companies? Opening satellite offices in other locations? If you recognize (as does this article) that good engineers can more or less write their own ticket and work and live wherever they please, it seems counterintuitive to try to herd them all to the west or east coast.
- rwhitman 16y ago
  So true. Maybe part of the 'problem' is the pool of talent living in places that aren't the Bay Area are discovering that telecommuting can pay the bills and are comfortable staying put (or conversely, traveling the globe as a nomad). I know thats been the case for me, and a good chunk of the guys I work with.
  - lusis 16y ago
    This has been my problem with all of these articles of late. Companies need to face the fact that, regardless of relocation package, people don't want to relocate. The only option is to either deal with job hoppers in your inbred local talent pool, hire from overseas or start looking at ways to make telecommuting work. On the overseas part, I know some seriously talented ruby developers who would love to come work in the states. My h1b experience is fairly ancient (2001) but I can think of one guy right now who has serious chops and has the code to back it up.
  - kls 16y ago
    I agree, and a lot of companies, even high-tech are still not comfortable with telecommuting. IBM is probably one of the better ones I have seen for encouraging a telecommuting workforce, but anyways I am getting off on a tangent with who does what. As a freelancer in Florida and soon the be based in the Florida Keys (which has no tech whatsoever), telecommuting is my lifeblood. I have a strategy that I employ extensively when I really need a gig, my network comes up dry and I cannot find any postings for telecommute freelancing. What I do is try to get a meeting with the decision maker and sell them on telecommute, this generally revolves around things like a money back guarantee if they try me for 2 weeks and do not like me. They get to walk, no pay no questions asked. the only stipulation I place on it is that they have to give me feedback on what I could have done better should they decide to walk. I have landed quite a few gigs this way and as of yet have never had to eat 2 weeks. I only do this for 3-6 mo+ gigs that way I don't risk providing 60-70% of the work for them to take and have someone else wrap up. I also try to get them on a Skype teleconference ASAP in which I do a screen share and run them through a presentation, so that they can see for themselves, rather early on, that the technology is there to easily collaborate. For a few of them, I have changed the entire dynamic of their organization. I remember a call with a hiring manager (now a good friend of mine) in which he said "You have really opened my eyes, I am no longer constrained to the best available in my market, but can find the best available in many markets". This is only my case, so take it for what it is worth and I caution that while I do take a lot of generalist contracts I also have a specialization that I am know for. That specilization is web Accessibility development for persons with disabilities as well as Javascript / REST based web applications. There are not a lot of people who do Accessibility for JS based web apps, so the phone rings a lot from people looking for me. But I do still have to get out and pound the pavement now and then. Anyways, some people don't know that an alternative exists and somethings it just takes some confidence for people to give you a chance. It has worked for me.
golgo13 16y ago
I left my old company in August for greener pastures at a newer company. It took exactly 5 weeks for my old company to contact me and see if I would come back. I politely declined. I didn't think finding a good backfill would be that difficult. But, I guess the market has switched to an employee market, for certain skill sets.
bad_user 16y ago
As a young company, "you're going after the top echelon of talent," he says, "with the least amount of resources." Right, because your company is going to cure cancer and be the next Google, so all hires will eventually get rich and save the world; just not right now.
motters 16y ago
This isn't at all what I'm finding in the job market, although I'm in the UK not in the US. From here both recruitment agents and employers themselves have indicated that they're getting many applications for each role advertised.
- lelele 16y ago
  The article is not talking about applications: it is talking about applications which fulfill requirements.
shalmanese 16y ago
The same situation applies to designers, only it's more insane.
wccrawford 16y ago
It isn't hard to find good software engineers. It's hard to find good software engineers that will take the pitiful wages being offered. Raise your rates and you'll find them.
- davidu 16y ago
  pitiful? It's all relative I guess.
- nickelplate 16y ago
  "It isn't hard to find good software engineers." I agree with this, even though I feel for the startups that are having a hard time finding people (because they're startups). When a company is struggling to find good developers it is usually because they fail to deliver on a number of fronts: quality job posting, good interviewing process, money, generous vacation time, good management, and then the actual work. On quality job postings... if you insist on looking for a rockstar, a ninja, or a samurai, you will miss out on talented people who are turned off by random displays of arrogance. This is especially true if you're not actually curing cancer or building a photorealistic renderer.
throwAway_28 16y ago
Everytime I read a thread with a similar theme.. basically telling economy is picking up, hiring is picking up.. I always find people scrambling to post something which almost screams-"I am so smart,talented-I can't believe it-Be thankful I dont have YOUR job right now" . This almost reeks of insecurity,and totally pisses me off. And then the customary startup guy, who for the life of him, hasnt found his ideal employee yet. Doesnt all this ever appear shallow to anyone? Anecdotally,I do know of a number of smart guys who got laid-off, and who did spend a lot of a time on the job search. Come on, Hn'ers- show some maturity, and acknowledge a phenomenon called a "long job search"- you might have known through your colleagues,or friends go through one.
- nickelplate 16y ago
  >> acknowledge a phenomenon called a "long job search" Depending on the skill set and the market, job hunting can be a long process indeed. It is usually easy for a good developer to find something; it can be much harder to find something good.
  - kls 16y ago
    Right the operative word being good here, Almost all developers consider themselves good. Reality diverges from that point. I always considered myself to be slightly above average developer. I have worked with a lot of smart guys some MIT alumni some self taught and among them I was average. It was not until, I ventured out into larger organizations that I got smacked with the reality of the passionless developer, that somehow learned enough to get a job but has no interest in technology other than it provides a fairly decent paycheck. I was stunned by this reality, up until this point I had worked in simulation, start-ups and small shops with really passionate guys who took pride in their code. When I first encountered the passionless developer I was appalled by their absolute disinterest in quality of code. Further many of them considered themselves to be senior and on par with the best of the best because their entire development existence has been in a sea of mediocrity. True story, I remember when the shift started taking place for web apps. When the cool kids where starting to write the front-end in JavaScript and shooting off XHR request to the back end to get info and update the page dynamically, when they started dumping the bulky server side frameworks for more nimble and rapid client side toolkits. I was at a fairly sizable organization and this stuff was by no means cutting edge anymore and I said you know, we should start doing some prototypes with this app architecture and see if it is advantageous. We already know that it produces a superior product in terms of usability so lets see if we can come up with a development process that is more efficient than we use now and give it a try. The response was well it's not Java and we are Java developers from a good deal of the team, the idea of not using a Java framework, to do web development, was hericy in their eyes. I was floored, I had never identified myself as a (X) developer and the reality that people do smacked me in the face pretty hard. So the point is if someone is an (X) developer, chances are they are not as good as they think they are. Development is about applying technology to problems not applying technology (X) to problems. If a developer has already constructed that box around themselves it lends evidence to the fact that they might not posses the though process or creative thinking required to be a great developer.
seanlinmt 16y ago
So where do you go if you're just looking for startup jobs? Are there any good sites out there? Or where do startups post openings?
lelele 16y ago
This will always be old news: people flock to the same place until local resources can't match. Smarter people work around the problem (in this case: by telecommuting) or seek greener pastures; other people keep complaining.

16 points by pavel 16y ago

This is the biggest problem we've encountered scaling our startup. We're profitable, growing, have a great customer base and solid marketing, but our product simply can't keep up with customer demands and opportunities to solve problems because we're unable to recruit engineers (despite paying 25%+ above market rates and offering generous benefits, a great team and interesting problems). When you have money in the bank, customers who want a product and 9 engineers when you need 15, it's a tough problem. Compromising on quality of engineers or cultural fit has been very bad for us in the past, so we're definitely picky now, but even still, the dearth of qualified individuals is a serious impediment to growth.

jbail 16y ago
Do you allow telecommuting? Or are you looking for local candidates only? What is your strategy to reach potential candidates? Are you working with a headhunter?
patio11 16y ago
I don't know how much domain expertise you would prefer your engineers to have about SEO, Rand, but have you considered that someone with the fairly rare combination of chops sufficient to build your tools and SEO expertise now has fantastically attractive options? You may be misidentifying the market you need to buy them from, and hence the market clearing price. The capitalist in me thinks it is virtually axiomatic that if you cannot fill demand at a 25% premium to the market clearing price you are in fact mistaken as to what you believe that price to be. Incindentally, a client of mine coming from the other side (they practically wrote the book on attracting engineering talent, but internal SEO knowledge is limited) has the same problem finding that combo.
- kls 16y ago
  Right, if you are using a salary site, it has been my observation that they are not correct whether it is a vast corporate conspiracy or just an anomaly ever time I check them they seem to under represent the reality of the market from 15-20%. Which is weird because you would think that the reporting person would inflate their earning to try to inflate the market. Maybe they are telling the truth and the sites have logic to try to account for an inflation that is not being falsely represented. Anyway, point is check you data source and ensure that it is reliable you may not be as far above the market as you assume you are.
conorgil145 16y ago
Just to let you know, I visited your website hoping to find out more about the open positions that you have at your company and could not find a page listing them. I visited the page titled 'SEO jobs' expecting it to be your open positions, but it looks like this is more of a job board. I don't know anything about your site so maybe I am missing something, but you might want to make it easier for developers to see which positions you have available. I hope you find some good developers!
anamax 16y ago
> we're unable to recruit engineers (despite paying 25%+ above market rates and offering generous benefits, a great team and interesting problems). If that is actually true, there's something negative that you're not mentioning. FWIW, I suspect that it isn't actually true. That said, there could be some other factor at work as well.

jbail 16y ago

I work as a software engineer. A few months ago, I was looking to for a job switch and got TONS of calls from companies both big and small in CA and NYC (mostly CA though). No offense to either place, but for me, neither is somewhere I'd want to live. Visit? Sure. Live, no thanks. Just me personally, but I settled on Denver for the work/life/outdoors balance without crazy amounts of traffic/crime/people. Fits me best. Maybe not you, and that's cool. We're all different. All of those offers from CA and NYC were conditional upon me moving. I wonder if that's what's hurting the hiring in some of the bigger markets. Maybe telecommuting is the answer for these companies? Opening satellite offices in other locations? If you recognize (as does this article) that good engineers can more or less write their own ticket and work and live wherever they please, it seems counterintuitive to try to herd them all to the west or east coast.

rwhitman 16y ago
So true. Maybe part of the 'problem' is the pool of talent living in places that aren't the Bay Area are discovering that telecommuting can pay the bills and are comfortable staying put (or conversely, traveling the globe as a nomad). I know thats been the case for me, and a good chunk of the guys I work with.
- lusis 16y ago
  This has been my problem with all of these articles of late. Companies need to face the fact that, regardless of relocation package, people don't want to relocate. The only option is to either deal with job hoppers in your inbred local talent pool, hire from overseas or start looking at ways to make telecommuting work. On the overseas part, I know some seriously talented ruby developers who would love to come work in the states. My h1b experience is fairly ancient (2001) but I can think of one guy right now who has serious chops and has the code to back it up.
- kls 16y ago
  I agree, and a lot of companies, even high-tech are still not comfortable with telecommuting. IBM is probably one of the better ones I have seen for encouraging a telecommuting workforce, but anyways I am getting off on a tangent with who does what. As a freelancer in Florida and soon the be based in the Florida Keys (which has no tech whatsoever), telecommuting is my lifeblood. I have a strategy that I employ extensively when I really need a gig, my network comes up dry and I cannot find any postings for telecommute freelancing. What I do is try to get a meeting with the decision maker and sell them on telecommute, this generally revolves around things like a money back guarantee if they try me for 2 weeks and do not like me. They get to walk, no pay no questions asked. the only stipulation I place on it is that they have to give me feedback on what I could have done better should they decide to walk. I have landed quite a few gigs this way and as of yet have never had to eat 2 weeks. I only do this for 3-6 mo+ gigs that way I don't risk providing 60-70% of the work for them to take and have someone else wrap up. I also try to get them on a Skype teleconference ASAP in which I do a screen share and run them through a presentation, so that they can see for themselves, rather early on, that the technology is there to easily collaborate. For a few of them, I have changed the entire dynamic of their organization. I remember a call with a hiring manager (now a good friend of mine) in which he said "You have really opened my eyes, I am no longer constrained to the best available in my market, but can find the best available in many markets". This is only my case, so take it for what it is worth and I caution that while I do take a lot of generalist contracts I also have a specialization that I am know for. That specilization is web Accessibility development for persons with disabilities as well as Javascript / REST based web applications. There are not a lot of people who do Accessibility for JS based web apps, so the phone rings a lot from people looking for me. But I do still have to get out and pound the pavement now and then. Anyways, some people don't know that an alternative exists and somethings it just takes some confidence for people to give you a chance. It has worked for me.

golgo13 16y ago

I left my old company in August for greener pastures at a newer company. It took exactly 5 weeks for my old company to contact me and see if I would come back. I politely declined. I didn't think finding a good backfill would be that difficult. But, I guess the market has switched to an employee market, for certain skill sets.

bad_user 16y ago

As a young company, "you're going after the top echelon of talent," he says, "with the least amount of resources." Right, because your company is going to cure cancer and be the next Google, so all hires will eventually get rich and save the world; just not right now.

motters 16y ago

This isn't at all what I'm finding in the job market, although I'm in the UK not in the US. From here both recruitment agents and employers themselves have indicated that they're getting many applications for each role advertised.

lelele 16y ago
The article is not talking about applications: it is talking about applications which fulfill requirements.

shalmanese 16y ago

The same situation applies to designers, only it's more insane.

wccrawford 16y ago

It isn't hard to find good software engineers. It's hard to find good software engineers that will take the pitiful wages being offered. Raise your rates and you'll find them.

davidu 16y ago
pitiful? It's all relative I guess.
nickelplate 16y ago
"It isn't hard to find good software engineers." I agree with this, even though I feel for the startups that are having a hard time finding people (because they're startups). When a company is struggling to find good developers it is usually because they fail to deliver on a number of fronts: quality job posting, good interviewing process, money, generous vacation time, good management, and then the actual work. On quality job postings... if you insist on looking for a rockstar, a ninja, or a samurai, you will miss out on talented people who are turned off by random displays of arrogance. This is especially true if you're not actually curing cancer or building a photorealistic renderer.

throwAway_28 16y ago

Everytime I read a thread with a similar theme.. basically telling economy is picking up, hiring is picking up.. I always find people scrambling to post something which almost screams-"I am so smart,talented-I can't believe it-Be thankful I dont have YOUR job right now" . This almost reeks of insecurity,and totally pisses me off. And then the customary startup guy, who for the life of him, hasnt found his ideal employee yet. Doesnt all this ever appear shallow to anyone? Anecdotally,I do know of a number of smart guys who got laid-off, and who did spend a lot of a time on the job search. Come on, Hn'ers- show some maturity, and acknowledge a phenomenon called a "long job search"- you might have known through your colleagues,or friends go through one.

nickelplate 16y ago
>> acknowledge a phenomenon called a "long job search" Depending on the skill set and the market, job hunting can be a long process indeed. It is usually easy for a good developer to find something; it can be much harder to find something good.
- kls 16y ago
  Right the operative word being good here, Almost all developers consider themselves good. Reality diverges from that point. I always considered myself to be slightly above average developer. I have worked with a lot of smart guys some MIT alumni some self taught and among them I was average. It was not until, I ventured out into larger organizations that I got smacked with the reality of the passionless developer, that somehow learned enough to get a job but has no interest in technology other than it provides a fairly decent paycheck. I was stunned by this reality, up until this point I had worked in simulation, start-ups and small shops with really passionate guys who took pride in their code. When I first encountered the passionless developer I was appalled by their absolute disinterest in quality of code. Further many of them considered themselves to be senior and on par with the best of the best because their entire development existence has been in a sea of mediocrity. True story, I remember when the shift started taking place for web apps. When the cool kids where starting to write the front-end in JavaScript and shooting off XHR request to the back end to get info and update the page dynamically, when they started dumping the bulky server side frameworks for more nimble and rapid client side toolkits. I was at a fairly sizable organization and this stuff was by no means cutting edge anymore and I said you know, we should start doing some prototypes with this app architecture and see if it is advantageous. We already know that it produces a superior product in terms of usability so lets see if we can come up with a development process that is more efficient than we use now and give it a try. The response was well it's not Java and we are Java developers from a good deal of the team, the idea of not using a Java framework, to do web development, was hericy in their eyes. I was floored, I had never identified myself as a (X) developer and the reality that people do smacked me in the face pretty hard. So the point is if someone is an (X) developer, chances are they are not as good as they think they are. Development is about applying technology to problems not applying technology (X) to problems. If a developer has already constructed that box around themselves it lends evidence to the fact that they might not posses the though process or creative thinking required to be a great developer.

seanlinmt 16y ago

So where do you go if you're just looking for startup jobs? Are there any good sites out there? Or where do startups post openings?

lelele 16y ago

This will always be old news: people flock to the same place until local resources can't match. Smarter people work around the problem (in this case: by telecommuting) or seek greener pastures; other people keep complaining.